Getting to Know San Salvador, Poco a Poco

On Thursday, January 21, just as the sun was rising, I arrived at the San Salvador International Airport. As soon as I retrieved my luggage from the carousel and cleared customs and immigration, I took a taxi into the city. The trip is about 50 km, and cost $25.

As the taxi sped along the Panamerican Highway, I saw several maquilas (zonas francas, free-trade zones). One of them stretched on for about a quarter of a mile, just rows of sheds on a barren lot. Many women were outside waiting for the gates to open to let them in to work. I saw no trees, no picnic tables for the workers to have their lunch breaks. I could only assume that they don’t go outside for their lunches. Do they eat at their work tables? Do they not eat lunch at all? These places are well guarded, so dropping in for a visit will not be possible.

The brilliant film, The Corporation, has a segment on YouTube that shows what we are not allowed to see about maquilas in El Salvador and Honduras. Please see it: The Corporation (5/23) Case Histories. And don’t miss Canada’s own Michael Walker, of the right-wing Fraser Institute, explaining in the same clip what a blessing the maquilas are to poor people around the world who are “starving to death, and the only thing they have to offer to anybody that is worth anything is their low-cost labor.” The only person who could believe this garbage is someone engaged in serious self-deception -- perhaps to justify investing in companies that profit from this kind of super-exploited labor.

The sprawling metropolis of San Salvador came into view, obscured by smog and watched over by the San Salvador Volcano (also known as Quetzaltepec). Home to approximately 2.27 million people, San Salvador is a city that has seen better days --before the 1980-92 civil war, before the earthquakes of January 13 and February 13, 2001, before the floods that resulted from Hurricane Ida last November (a disaster exacerbated by deforestation). By most accounts, it's one of the most dangerous cities in Central America.

I've begun my sojourn in El Salvador's capitol city as a kind of pilgrimage to the place where Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated for refusing to be silent about the United States-sponsored repression of Salvadoran campesinos. He has been an inspirational figure to me ever since I saw the 1989 biographical film, Romero (still available to rent in some video stores and now available on YouTube). I want to understand how an ordinary person, who sees injustice but accepts it as the status quo, is transformed into a person who refuses to be silent about these injustices even to the point of accepting martyrdom as the price to be paid for speaking the truth.

Arriving at the Novo Apart-Hotel, I was shown to a comfortable room facing a lovely garden and a swimming pool. At $55 a night, the place was beyond what I’ve budgeted for accommodations during my trip; but with a hot water shower, wifi in the room and a buffet breakfast, it was a nice way to transition into El Salvador. There was a small group of English-speaking people (some of them probably well-intentioned) who are engaged in the missionary business in El Salvador. I appreciated the information they were able to give me about what they knew of the country, its people and their customs; but their El Salvador is not the one I’m looking for.

After a couple of days I moved on to Hostal La Portada. It is here that I am meeting people who are providing me with my initiation into San Salvador.